Tensions are once again high between India and Pakistan. Earlier today, the Indian air force struck targets in Pakistan, reportedly resulting in 300 deaths. The target was a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) camp. This was the first air strike by India on Pakistani territory since the 1971 war between the two nations…

The facility that the Indian air force struck was identified by the U.S. military as a Jihadi training camp 15 years ago when a JeM-trained Jihadi was incarcerated at Gitmo…JeM is affiliated with Al Qaeda…

Many believe that the best way to judge someone is not just by their friends, but by their enemies.

If that axiom is true, then America must be doing something right, because the lowest of the low in the human race are coming forth with their venom and threats in the wake of President Trump’s announcement that the U.S. will move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Just about every Jihadist organization on the planet has chimed in.

Before you assume that President Trump’s announcement will touch off attacks of retaliation, you should realize that all of these organizations have already carried out atrocities and attacks. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem will not change them. It merely draws them out into the open with their disgusting rhetoric:

• Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan “spokesman” Mohammad Khorasani issued a statement condemning President Trump’s decision and called for “all Muslims to unite against kufr (non-believers).”

• The founder and leader of the UN- designated terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed, Maulana Masood Azhar, released a threatening statement against President Trump’s decision.

• In a statement posted on on the Ikhwanonline.info website, the Muslim Brotherhood declared the U.S. an “enemy” and “Jerusalem is an Islamic and Arab land, for which we will shed our blood, freedom and life, and we fight every aggressor and every supporter of aggression. This is the way of our Jihad.”

• Al Qaeda released the following statement: “Recognition of Jerusalem as capital of the Zionist entity is blatant aggression by Crusader Trump against the sanctities of Muslims. The surest and shortest way to confront the aggression and arrogance of the Pharaoh of this age, the U.S., is Jihad in the Way of Allah, by targeting its vital interests and the interests of its Zionist and Crusader allies everywhere.”

• Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb: “We call on every mujahid to support the liberation of Palestine, the victory of the Palestinians to purge al-Aqsa of Jewish filth.”

• Kashmir-based Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind: “It is a duty upon Muslims to come forth with urgency and do everything needed to stop the madman sitting in the White House and stop him from dishonoring the sacred land of Bayt al-Maqdis and to storm and burn the embassies of the U.S. and Israel to demolish them. We urge honorable Muslims across the world to attack and harm U.S. and Israeli companies and financial and commercial interests. The honor of Bayt al-Maqdis will be restored by shedding the blood of Americans and Israelis. It is the duty of every Muslim, no matter where, to restore the honor of Bayt al-Maqdis. The Holy Land must be made the graveyard for Jews.”

• The Hasam Movement (Arms of Egypt Movement) released a written statement calling for an uprising in response to the decision.

• Hezbollah: Hezbollah leader Sayyed Nasrallah spoke and said that the most important reactions that must be made are a new Intifada and a new Arab summit. He also said the decision was a legitimate reason to target U.S. forces.

• Al Shabaab: “Trump’s decision to relocate the U.S. embassy is evidence of aggression against Islam and Muslims. We urge all Muslims to take up weapons and defend al-Aqsa from the American-backed Zionist occupation.”

• The Taliban: “The Islamic Emirate strongly condemns recognition of Muslims’ first Qibla Baital Maqdas, as the capital of occupying Israel by the president of America. We consider this anti-Muslim bigotry and a reckless step. The decision by Trump will fan the flames of conflict in the entire world, especially in the Middle East.”

The overwhelming majority of Muslims do not commit acts of violent Jihad, but that does not mean that there isn’t a doctrinal basis for it in Islamic scripture.

I am not talking about just a few violent verses in the Quran. The Islamic trilogy is replete with it: the Quran, the Hadith and the Sirah. (The Hadith are traditions and stories of the life of Muhammed and the Sirah is the biography of Muhammed). Moreover, in the Quran, the principle of abrogation bestows the most violent verses with the greatest strength as compared to earlier, peaceful verses.

These are facts, and if you read what the Jihadis themselves talk to each other about, EVERYTHING they do is based on contemporary interpretation of Islamic scripture.

To assign these beliefs to EVERY SINGLE Muslim of the 1.2 billion Muslims on the planet is wrong. But to deny the doctrinal basis in Islam for all of this violent Jihad is just as wrong and it is preventing the West from coming to grips with the global war with which we are faced, whether we want to believe it or not. There is a reason why we see Islamic terrorist organizations as well as individual Jihadis waging violent Jihad in places as geographically diverse as Boston, Los Angeles, Fort Hood, Little Rock, New York, Washington, Buenos Aires, London, Amsterdam, Toulouse, Madrid, Moscow, Beslan, Marrakech, Algiers, Benghazi, Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Yaounde, Nairobi, Mogadishu, Timbuktu, Kaduna, Dar el Salam, Sana’a, Istanbul, Fallujah, Ramadi, Karachi, Islamabad, Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Mumbai, Amritsar, Dhaka, Hat Yai, Yala, Bali, and Mindanao.

In warfare, your enemy’s reality becomes your reality. To defeat him, you better understand him. You better understand his motivations and his goals. In short, you need to know what makes him tick. We understood what made the Nazis tick, we had Mein Kampf as a doctrinal guide. We understood what made the communists tick, we had The Communist Manifesto and other works as a doctrinal guide. But we REFUSE to even TRY to understand what makes the Jihadis tick because we fear that the reality will be too frightening. We are in willful denial: “The violence simply cannot have anything to do with Islam because there are too many peaceful Muslims in the world.”

That is missing the point entirely. The fact that the majority of Muslims do not know Islamic doctrine and thus do not adhere to it is not particularly remarkable or surprising. How many Catholics are truly highly familiar with the doctrinal aspects of their faith?

The fact remains that there are violent Jihadists around the world who commit acts of war and they both justify it on Islamic scripture and carry out these acts to promote Islam. The doctrinal basis is found in Islamic law, known as Shariah. The Jihadists’ goal is to impose Islamic law and Islamic law is the code which they follow. (If you are skeptical of this, go pick up a copy of the excellent work by Raymond Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader, and read what the enemy writes and says.) To deny the doctrinal basis in Islam for violent Jihad is becoming more and more suicidal as a civilization with each new incident that we in turn deny.

The latest example is of course in Boston. Two Jihadis, perhaps members of a Jihadist organization, or perhaps so-called “lone wolf” actors, committed atrocious acts of violent Jihad, killing several innocents and wounding many more. Despite evidence on social media and YouTube, as well as accounts of the Jihadis’ devout Islamic beliefs, the simpletons in the news media and even in our own government are pondering aloud what their motivation could possibly have been. Hours and hours of TV coverage in the so-called “mainstream” media go by with nary a mention of the word “Islam.” The elephant in the room is being ignored.

Some “experts” are quoted as taking comfort in the belief that the two Tsarnaev brothers may not have had any operational connection with any known terrorist organization, such as Al Qaeda. This is 180 degrees out from reality and these “experts” completely miss the point.

The fact that the Tsarnaev brothers may have “only” been inspired to commit Jihad on their own is not cause for celebration or relaxation. It is cause for alarm and it would seem to be part of a disturbing pattern that has been emerging over the years:

• Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, aka Carlos Bledsoe, apparently acting on his own after receiving terrorist training in Yemen, shot two US Army soldiers outside a Little Rock, Arkansas recruiting office, killing one, Private William Long and wounding another.

• Major Nidal Malik Hasan, apparently acting on his own, after years of conversing with Al Qaeda Imam Anwar Al Awlaki, shot and killed 13 fellow US Army soldiers and wounded 39 more.

These types of attacks are indicative of a revolutionary critical mass in which centralized direction and control is no longer necessary. Jihadis around the world are now waging violent Jihad in Al Qaeda-like fashion after reading web postings and listening to sermons. This presents a whole new series of challenges for security services and makes the use of military force much less effective. Infiltrating organizations such as Al Qaeda and Hezbollah has been extremely difficult. But how does one infiltrate lone wolf actors like the Tsarnaev brothers? Who does the US military go after in the wake of the Boston attacks?

This new reality makes identifying and understanding the Islamic doctrinal basis of our Jihadist enemies all the more important, yet with each passing attack, we seem to be getting further and further away from doing so.

President Obama may say that Al Qaeda is defeated, or Al Qaeda is “on the run,” or that the “core” of Al Qaeda is in ruins and other political rhetoric, but the US State Department continues to issue advisories warning Americans traveling abroad that they need to realize that they are being targeted by Jihadists around the globe.

Of course, the State Department doesn’t actually use the term “Jihadists,” because we know that our Muslim Brotherhood “allies” might get upset if they did. And the exclusion of the term “Jihad” started under Condi Rice, not Hillary Clinton…just so you know…

It’s also instructive that to get the details of the State Department’s terrorism advisory, you need to go to the foreign media, because the US media doesn’t like to cover these topics any more. The report below comes to us from the Times of India.

The United States has issued a worldwide travel alert to its citizens including inSouth Asia where it said terrorist outfits like al-Qaida, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba ( LeT) might harm them.“US citizens are reminded to maintain a high level of vigilance and to take appropriate steps to increase their security awareness,” the State Department said in a statement yesterday. Noting that current information suggests that al-Qaida, its affiliated organisations, and other terrorist outfits continue to plan terrorist attacks against US interests in multiple regions, including Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, the State Department said these attacks may employ a wide variety of tactics including suicide operations, assassinations, kidnappings, hijackings and bombings.

It said extremists may elect to use conventional or non-conventional weapons, and target both official and private interests.

Examples of such targets include high-profile sporting events, residential areas, business offices, hotels, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, schools, public areas, and other tourist destinations both in the United States and abroad where the country’s citizens gather in large numbers, including during holidays, the State Department said.

According to the State Department, anti-Western terrorist groups, some on the US government’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, have been active in India, including Islamist extremist groups such as Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami, Harakat ul-Mujahidin, Indian Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e Taiba.

It is certainly worth noting that the State Department lists these Jihadist groups. This certainly runs counter to the narrative propagated by the Obama administration that the “enemy” is simply Al Qaeda.

It is also worth reminding readers that Lashkar-e Taiba was the group that pulled off the Mumbai massacre in 2008, which targeted Westerners and Jews in the Indian financial center. The reconnaissance and intelligence gathering for that operation was done by a US citizen from Chicago named David Headley.

UPDATE: We are not certain that the report linked below is accurate and valid, nor do we know, if accurate and valid, if it is related in any way to the State Department advisory. However, given the broad nature of the State Department advisory, covering the US and overseas and just about every type of target imaginable–AND the possible use of “non-conventional weapons,” the report below from the Crocodile’s Lament blog is worth at least a glance…

America is hamstrung in its efforts to defend itself from Jihadist terrorists by a remarkable denial in law enforcement, homeland security, intelligence and military circles as to the nature of our enemy and the threat we face.

This stems partly from political correctness and ignorant assumptions about our enemy and his doctrine.

But it also is the result of effective influence operations run by the Muslim Brotherhood to control how we ourselves describe our enemies and speak about our enemies. This has reached the point at which the Obama administration has openly embraced the Muslim Brotherhood overseas in nations like Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and, evidently, Syria.

Muslim Brotherhood front groups, like Hamas-tied CAIR, ISNA and the Muslim Students Association, all of which were named unindicted co-conspirators in the largest terrorism financing conviction in US history, and have been shielded from prosecution by Eric Holder, have tremendous influence in the Obama administration, to the point that we now know that, despite the fact that the FBI felt compelled to cut off all relations with CAIR, for example, Obama White House officials have met with CAIR hundreds of times over the past 3 years.

So, while the DHS pats down little old ladies and toddlers in airports, they are in TOTAL denial as to the war we are in.

Individuals like John Brennan, Eric Holder and Paul Stockton, who can only be described as bureaucratic train wrecks, control our policies and prevent America from ever being effective in coming to terms with the threat from violent Jihad, which is based in the doctrine known as Shariah.

I urge you to view the short videos below. I do not like terms like, “violent Islamic extremism” or “radical Islam,” but they are a far sight better than the terms our bureaucratized counterterrorism apparatus uses to describe the threat.

The fact of the matter is that America and the West is confronted with a global Islamic insurgency. Like all insurgencies, this one is mostly political, not military, though it does have a military/violent component. This is born out in the fact that large, global Islamic organizations that claim to be peaceful, such as Hizb ut Tahrir, the Muslim Brotherhood and Tabligi Jamaat have the same goals as terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, HAMAS, Lashkar e Taiba, the Taliban, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, Abu Sayyaf, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Jemaah Islamiyah.

These goals and this insurgency are anchored in Islamic doctrine, known as Shariah. This does not mean that all Muslims are terrorists or Jihadists, but there is no denying that the doctrine exists and has existed for many years. The fact is, most Muslims do not adhere to this doctrine some are unaware that it even exists. But unfortunately that cannot be said to delegitimize the Shariah doctrine that brings us violent Jihad and a global Islamic insurgency designed to bring about supremacy of Islam worldwide.

Thanks to our own ignorance and the influence operations of the political wing of the global Islamic insurgency (especially the Muslim Brotherhood in America), we have become willfully blind to the threat. We need no further evidence than the disgraceful bureaucrats in the three videos below:

Late last week a State Department spokesman uttered “The war on terror is over.”

That utterance was followed up by President Obama’s surprise trip to Afghanistan (“coincidentally” on the anniversary of the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, or so we are told…). While in Afghanistan, Obama gave a political speech aimed at folks back home in America in which he echoed the sentiments of his State Department spokesman in essentially declaring Al Qaeda beaten.

Before we deconstruct this politically motivated fantasy, we should probably point out that we are not now, nor were we truly ever engaged in a “war on terrorism.” We don’t want to belabor the point because many observers have pointed out this reality over the years. Terrorism is a method, not an enemy. As the late philosopher and columnist Jeff Cooper said shortly after President Bush named this struggle the “war on terrorism:” “Give us an enemy we can shoot at, Mr. President.”

But it was not to be. Obama stopped referring to the war on terrorism as soon as he came into office, his administration floating the term “overseas contingency operations” instead.

That drew instant and widespread ridicule and we haven’t heard the term mentioned much since it was originally floated after Obama got into office.

We should have paid closer attention. This wasn’t just about changing names. This was about ending the war effort. The goal in changing the name was to prepare the American people for an end to the war. Obama came into office knowing he was going to end the war–unilaterally. The fact is, the war and the threat of terrorism don’t help liberals get elected. There was a reason why the word “terrorism” was never uttered at the 2004 Democratic National Convention when the Democrats nominated Senator John Kerry.

The DNC did the polling and the focus groups and found out that the issue was a loser for them. Ever since, the hard left has been hell bent for leather on ending the war effort.

Obama’s State Department spokesman claimed last week that “since most of Al Qaeda’s is now dead” Islamists have other places to turn for legitimate inclusion in the political process.

There is so much to comment on here that we hardly know where to begin.

First of all, most of the original members of Al Qaeda were dead before Obama even got into office. Most estimates were that some 75% of Al Qaeda’s leadership had been killed or captured in Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom. The killing of Osama Bin Laden just over a year ago likely did not add much to the operational degradation of Al Qaeda. Despite claims to the contrary, it is highly unlikely that Bin Laden still exercised operational control over Al Qaeda around the globe at the time of his death. So, this is hardly a new development as the Obama State Department spokesman implies.

We now know from seized documents and from former intelligence operatives that Bin Laden had, for years, limited his communications with the outside world, including Al Qaeda, to a single human courier. There is simply no way he could possibly have maintained operational authority or control over the organization in such circumstances.

This suggests that his death did not add substantially to the degradation of Al Qaeda’s operational capability.

Bin Laden was barely involved any more. He wasn’t even in a position to raise money–his chief role for years in the past. Nor did he find it necessary to issue frequent videotaped messages to his followers or to the world at large, something he took great pride in doing earlier in Al Qaeda’s war against the West.

Because of this, Bin Laden’s death cannot be accurately described as ending Al Qaeda. Perhaps we are on the cusp of defeating Al Qaeda in the Afghan-Pak theater of operations, but that is not due to Bin Laden’s death. Bin Laden’s death was in reality a byproduct of the campaign against Al Qaeda in that region over a period of years, starting way back in 2001.

Moreover, Al Qaeda globally is far from finished. The organization has evolved into an umbrella group for Jihadists around the globe. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is active in Africa. Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula is locked in an active, violent insurgency in Yemen. Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s successor and always the organization’s ideologue, is still at large. His Jihadist brother, released from prison in the so-called “Arab Spring” is back in operation in Egypt.

Then there are the Al Qaeda affiliates that don’t identify themselves as Al Qaeda, but certainly operate in a similar fashion. There’s Aby Sayyaf in the Philippines, which has kidnapped and murdered Americans in the past. There’s Al Shabaab in Somalia, which recruits heavily from the Somali refugee community here in the USA. There’s Boko Haram, which is making life in Nigeria a living hell for Christians. There’s Jemaah Islamiyah in Malaysia and Indonesia, which has attacked Westerners, including the 202 deaths in the Bali, Indonesia bombing in 2002. And of course, the Taliban themselves, who are allied with Al Qaeda and gave them a launching pad for operations in the 1990s.

All of these organizations still exist. We are told now that Bin Laden did not have a high regard for these affiliates, but that doesn’t necessarily make them any less of a threat.

But let’s not forget the Jihadist terrorist organizations that operate and who are not overtly aligned with Al Qaeda. These serve as a reminder that the enemy isn’t just “Al Qaeda,” despite what the Obama administration wants you to believe. We should not take too much comfort in the fact that most of these organizations operate overseas and don’t regularly target Americans. They don’t view Americans any differently than they view other Westerners or kafirs.

There is the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines, which, like Abu Sayyef, has targeted Americans in the past. There’s Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the horrific Mumbai attacks in 2008. Keep in mind that LeT used an American to conduct reconnaissance for that operation and their captured literature showed plans to target the American homeland. There are the Islamic Jihad Union in Uzbekistan and Jaish-e-Mohammed in Kashmir. There’s Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has known operatives in the US. And, along those same lines, we have HAMAS, which currently only targets Israel, but which has an extensive network in the US.

Most ominously, given the threat from Iran, is Hezbollah, described by more than one US official as the “A” team of terrorism. Congressional investigations estimate that they have thousands of supporters and hundred of operatives here in the US. A very recent report indicates that Hezbollah has a network centered on Shia mosques here in the US as well.

But this all misses the basic point. We are on the receiving end of a global Islamic insurgency. It’s not a homogenous insurgency by any stretch. Many of the insurgent groups are completely unrelated and some even hate each other. But they are all united in one goal: establishment of Islamic rule under Shariah law.

This war did not start on September 11th, 2001, with Al Qaeda’s attacks on the US homeland; it had been raging on a lower level overseas for decades. And the war will not end with the death of Osama Bin Laden, or the outright defeat of Al Qaeda, or the inevitable NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The declaration of victory is purely for domestic political consumption, which is very sad and dangerous indeed.

Center for Security Policy Vice President Christopher Holton is available for speaking engagements on the subjects of terrorism, terrorism financing, Shariah, Shariah-Compliant Finance and Jihad. For more information, contact him at chris@christopherholton.com

Jihad is global. We are in a world war. Need proof? A wanted Jihadist terrorist from Pakistan was just arrested in…Chile…

Key man behind Kandahar hijack held in Chile

In a major breakthrough, Abdul Rauf, one of the masterminds of the 1999 Kandahar hijack and a brother-in-law of dreaded terrorist Maulana Masood Azhar, has been arrested in Chile. Masood Azhar, the boss of the Jaish-e-Mohammed was one of the three persons released from a jail in Jammu in exchange of more than 150 passengers held hostage at Kandahar on board the hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC-814.

The flight had taken off from Kathmandu on December 24 1999 and the hostage crisis lasted some six days. The Central Bureau of Investigation, in its chargesheet in the case had named Rauf, a Pakistan national, as one of the key financiers and plotters of the hijack.

A reward of Rs 10 lakh had been announced and he is wanted in India in the hijacking case. As per the CBI, he should be about 37 years of age. The last time the name of Abdul Rauf surfaced was when he was reportedly “called in” by Pakistani authorities in October 2009 to negotiate the release of 42 persons taken hostages by pro-Taliban militants at a military garrison in Rawalpindi. This indicated that some one in the Pakistan establishment knew where to contact Rauf.

A joint team of the CBI and the Research Analysis Wing (RAW) will be going to Chile tomorrow to verify whether arrested Abdul Rauf is the same person wanted in this country.

The CBI’s task is daunting as it does not have Rauf’s picture or his fingerprints. In its recent tranche of leaked cables, Wikileaks had suggested that in 2005 India had of more than 150 passengers held hostage at Kandahar on board the hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC-814. The flight had taken off from Kathmandu on December 24 1999 and the hostage crisis lasted some six days. The CBI, in its chargesheet in the case had named Rauf, a Pakistan national, as one of the key financiers and plotters of the hijack. A reward of Rs 10 lakh had been announced and he is wanted in India in the hijacking case.

As per the CBI, he should be about 37 years of age. The last time the name of Abdul Rauf surfaced was when he was reportedly “called in” by Pakistani authorities in October 2009 to negotiate the release of 42 persons taken hostages by pro-Taliban militants at a military garrison in Rawalpindi. This indicated that some one in the Pakistan establishment knew where to contact Rauf.

A joint team of the CBI and the Research Analysis Wing (RAW) will be going to Chile tomorrow to verify whether arrested Abdul Rauf is the same person wanted in this country. The CBI’s task is daunting as it does not have Rauf’s picture or his fingerprints.

In its recent tranche of leaked cables, Wikileaks had suggested that in 2005 India had asked the US for his photograph besides seeking permission to interrogate Mansoor Akhtar, ex-Civil Aviation Minister in the Taliban Government of Afghanistan, and Akhtar Usmani, the Taliban corps commander in Kandahar – both reportedly in the custody of the American authorities. The latter two were at the helm when the hijack took place.

Sources in the government said the CBI was informed that a person Abdul Rauf had been nabbed for travelling on forged documents. An Interpol Red Corner notice was pending against Rauf.

A team would be soon going to Chile to ascertain his identity as well as question him, the sources said, adding some help could be asked from friendly intelligence agencies.According to the confessional statement of Abdul Latif, one of the conspirators who is in an Indian jail at present Abdul Rauf and Yusuf Azhar, a brother of Masood Azhar, criss-crossed India and Nepal several times. It was in July 1999 that the hijack plot took shape.

In August, Abdul Latif was told about the plan and he forged passports and travel documents for the five hijackers. At a crucial meeting of the gang in the Kathmandu on December 13, Latif was told he would not be on the hijacked plane but should remain as the gang’s point-man in Mumbai.

When the Hijacking took place Abdul Rauf called up Abdul Latif, asking him to call up the BBC offices in London and give details of the hijacking. The call was intercepted by the Mumbai police and Latif was picked up even as the Indian agencies negotiated for the release of passengers.